The National Archaeological Research Agenda (NOaA)
     and quality management in Dutch archaeology

Competition

In an ideal market public interests are safeguarded by competition, which forces producers to be efficient 14 and to serve the needs of their clients in the best possible way. As we have seen, the archaeology market does not conform to the ideal because demand is enforced by law: the developer has a duty rather than (in most cases) a desire to care for the heritage. Many principals will be interested only in completing the investigation, and not necessarily in the quality of the work. The shift over the past few years in the negotiating power of principals/developers and the parties implementing the work is interesting in this respect. The advent of specialist archaeological consultancies has made principals/developers much more conscious of price, products, procedures and rules. The archaeology market differs from a traditional market in other ways, too. It yields little or no profits for the consumer; there is no rivalry for the consumption of goods; and no one can be excluded from the profits yielded by a good. After all, the law stipulates that research results must be accessible to the public. The discipline of competition is not therefore enough in the archaeology market.

It is also generally thought that the quality of research is currently under pressure in Dutch archaeology for specific historical reasons. ‘Malta’ and the liberalisation of archaeology came about in the Netherlands in a fairly healthy economic climate, with strong growth in demand, little competition and good yields. However, many new operators now have to gain their foothold in a market where circumstances are much less favourable, with very strong competition, standardisation of products, downward pressure on prices, ‘despecialisation’ and few or no profits to be made.

Institutional ethics

 Institutional safeguards involve the strengthening of ethical standards associated with the public interest at stake. Archaeology in general, and commercial archaeologists in particular – as they see it – have a well-defined set of professional ethics. After all, almost everyone will have had an extensive, archaeology-oriented university education.15 Codes of conduct also exist for the profession.16 However, in the imperfect archaeological heritage market, it is not appropriate to trust entirely to shared values and standards. Clearly, institutional guarantees warrant more attention. One might consider introducing a peer review system for the assessment of fieldwork and reports, for example.

Rules

 Many rules have been introduced in archaeology since the Monuments and Historic Buildings Act came into force. However, the legislation was not designed with commercial agencies in mind. So, on the introduction of the interim policy, in anticipation of the review of the legislation, the State Secretary naturally decided to introduce a quality management system. Though this body of regulations was compiled by the archaeological sector itself – self-regulation, in other words – compliance is guaranteed by the fact that access to the market requires a licence to perform archaeological investigations issued by the Minister. The next section describes the quality management system in archaeology and how it came into being.